


no color more beautiful than you

by tanktrilby



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: M/M, Terminal Illnesses, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 07:57:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4255518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanktrilby/pseuds/tanktrilby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is that what love is? Karma doesn’t know. He used to think love was the good times, looking up during board meetings with a carefully-crafted expression of boredom to see Gakushuu rolling his eyes at him across the table. </p><p>These days, love is panic attacks in the middle of the supermarket, kneeling between the aisles and struggling to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no color more beautiful than you

“’Sup,” Karma says, slinging himself into the patient’s chair, his hands clasped behind his neck. “Will I be fixed today? I’m a busy man, you know, Sensei.”

“That depends entirely on you, Karma-kun,” says Sensei. He looks attentive, intent, and Karma beams back. “What do you feel like talking about today?”

And this- this is bullshit. Karma doesn’t have to be here. He shouldn’t be here. But company policy is to offer therapy to anyone who lost or is losing a loved one, and who came up with that in the first place? Karma himself, that’s who. _Maybe the first rules you’ll learn to obey will be the ones you made yourself._

And it helps that Sensei’s as weird as hell- he’s supposed to be some kind of wizard with all the weepies who gush out their problems in this very office. Karma supposes, being one of those weepies himself, that he should show a little respect.

“Ah, I dunno,” Karma yawns. Sensei’s expression doesn’t change. “Well, my husband’s still dying, for one. Anything new in your life, Sensei?”

“How is Gakushuu-kun doing?”

A brief flicker of irritation flickers across Karma’s exhausted mind. Sensei’s feeling around for cracks, and Karma’s no longer so confident he won’t find any. He puts himself together every day, pieces coming to assemble themselves as he stares into the mirror: a jagged smirk, a tilt of the chin, an air of careless good humor. But the pieces don’t fit so perfectly anymore. A good strong wind might make him crumble, so he has to brace himself every time he steps outside their apartment.

He tells Sensei, “I told you. Dying. Same old, same old.”

“I meant today, specifically. You already visited him, am I wrong? Unless you spent the night at his bedside again.” Sensei’s voice is gentle; trying not to upset the doll-boy.

Karma stares long and hard at him. “He’s fine. He didn’t eat anything last night, and he keeps saying he’s full, but the nurses managed to get, like, a quarter of a meal in him this morning.”

Sensei says, “That must have been difficult.” Karma bristles, but he goes on, “To see someone whose strength you admire fall so weak, that is.”

“Sensei, you’re totally trying to make this into some superiority thing, aren’t you?” Karma struggles to keep his voice clean and neutral. “It’s not about Gakushuu not being strong. His strength isn’t something so cheap.”

“Far from it, Karma-kun,” says Sensei. “I’m more interested in your perception of love. Do you think it means putting on a brave face, even in the face of adversity, and not letting him know that you’re struggling as well?”

Is that what love is? Karma doesn’t know. He used to think love was the good times, looking up during board meetings with a carefully-crafted expression of boredom to see Gakushuu rolling his eyes at him across the table. Getting tangled up in each other in slow lazy weekends spent gaming or reading, or the way violet eyes went dark and heavy with desire when Karma licked his lips in a certain way. Little things like fiddling with recipes together and calling out to each other while they worked. His happiness was his home, and his home was where Gakushuu was.

Now what’s left is the tatters of what used to be. Love looks different when you’re about to lose it; love transforms with the long slow stretch of days of waiting, and it wrings you out, like a bow drawn taut for too long. These days, love is panic attacks in the middle of the supermarket, kneeling between the aisles and struggling to breathe. Love is a tide that bears you across life, and what if that life is an unhappy one? Love still remains. Love will not go away when the bad times come.

His eyes leak tears. He dissolves in them.

“It’s not a sign of weakness to grieve,” Sensei says. “Even before anything happens. Grieve what you lost, but don’t forget what you still have.”

Karma smirks down at his blurry knees. “Hey, that doesn’t sound half as profound out loud as it probably did in your head, Sensei.”

Sensei is silent.

“I met his dad,” Karma says abruptly. He never handles silence well, and isn’t this what he’s good at, pattering on, prodding at cracks and dancing away from what crawled out? Troublemaker, too smart for his own good. Gakushuu loves it and envies him for it; for the way he never has to measure every word he says, the way he can sharpen his words and not care. Gakushuu sometimes reads people more accurately than he does, but he’s never caused trouble for the sake of it. Karma wishes he could have… well, it doesn’t matter anymore. All Karma does these days is wish and wish and wake up with a deep stabbing pain where his heart is.

“Asano Gakuho is a complicated man,” says Sensei.

Karma huffs a laugh. It sounds weak and desperate in his own ears, so he covers them, shutting out the world for a moment. “You can say that again.”

Seeing his father-in-law, even after the reconciliation, had been like a knife to the gut. Part of it had been the way he looked -eyes lined but alert, hair gracefully turning towards grey. It was like seeing Gakushuu in twenty more years, Gakushuu as he would never be. _Twenty more years_ sounded like another one of Karma’s useless wishes, and he swallowed down bitter grief and reached for the anger instead.

“Ne, Asano-san, was it fun? Hearing that the son you abandoned was finally going to be out of your way, not chasing after you anymore?” He had leaned forward, a clown’s grotesque smile painted on his face. Asano Gakuho didn't flinch, or look away. “You don’t have to endure being loved anymore, isn’t it a relief?”

His father-in-law had kept looking at him. His eyes were tired and sad, and Karma, in that moment, felt his rage flare higher and brighter than ever. This snake in the grass didn’t deserve to feel that exhaustion or pain, the agony of seeing the ghost of Gakushuu’s former self he’d become. Anyone who tossed Gakushuu away like that couldn’t-

“It isn’t a matter of who loves my son more, you or I, Akabane Karma,” Gakuho had said softly. “It has transcended past that point. I have failed, not only as a father, as I was willing to concede, but as a protector as well. I have stepped away each time he reached out for me. My motives do not hold weight; neither does the fact that I did it all out of love, because my love has no meaning when I have let him down so completely. Only your love matters now, Karma-kun. You always take such good care of Gakushuu. Remember my envy and ignore my regrets. I’m glad he has someone like you by his side.”

The soft, polished way of speaking- the mannerisms and cadence, and the way his hand occasionally reached for the mole on his left cheek -a feature he shared with his son- as if for reassurance only made Karma angrier. Earlier, he’d seen the elder Asano as the man Gakushuu fell short of becoming; once he was seeing Gakuho without the filter of encroaching grief, he looked older than Karma had initially thought. He looked like any man whose twenty nine year-old son was dying: thin, tired, old.

Karma thought about Gakushuu, the way he was perfectly polite and respectful to the nurses, the way they giggled and smiled around him, the immediacy of it all pushed back by how handsome and gentle he is: Prince Charming singing on his deathbed. It all went away when the door closes and it was just the two of them, buckling under the weight but buckling together. 

“Are you stupid?” Karma bit out. “Is that it? Are you enough of an idiot to actually think that’s it, you’re done?”

Gakuho’s head snapped up, eyes wide.

“You don’t just… leave him behind,” Karma said. His fists were clenched on the pretty white tablecloth. “You don’t walk away because you can’t look him in the eye now. Your feelings _don’t matter at all,_ don’t you get it? If you loved him at all you wouldn’t leave him alone even after you learned your lesson.”

He stood up. Gakuho’s head was bowed, his shoulders drawn in. There had been a kind of distant longing in his voice on the rare occasions Gakushuu spoke of his father; _the Director is amazing._ When Karma had tried to say, _but you’re amazing too_ , Gakushuu had shaken his head, mulish. _No, the Director’s **really** amazing._

Karma tells Sensei, “He said he’s glad Gakushuu has me. _Has,_ not _had,_ which was a refreshing change, I guess. Hearing all those doctors, you’d think he was six feet under already.”

And there he goes again. Little hitching sobs fill the room; Karma’s recently discovered that he sounds like a scared child when he cries. _The more you know._ Little tadpoles of sadness writhe in his chest; his heart is a swamp, deep and muddy and green. What is down there? Dark and drowned, losing the hand he thought he could hold on to for the rest of his life. _Don’t leave me alone._

Sensei moves to hand over the box of tissues but Karma fishes out a wad from his pocket first; he always comes prepared for anything, and these days he’s prepared for sudden and uncontrollable attacks of grief.

 “You should tell Gakushuu-kun,” Sensei says. “He will not love you any less for admitting you’ll miss him when he’s gone. I don’t think weakness or strength have much impact on your relationship. After all, he was willing to let you see him like this, and you, Karma-kun, don’t think of him any differently than you did when he was in good health.”

“It’s not that simple.”

It isn’t, is it? In half an year Karma will still be around and Gakushuu will be gone. The boy with coral hair and violet eyes who kissed with his eyes closed and laced his fingers with Karma’s, conspiratorial and lovely. It had been the greatest triumph of their lives, hadn’t it? The two prodigies joining forces to become invincible. They’d pulled the rug from under the universe with that one. They were supposed to never fail, forever laughing in dappled sunlight, brilliant and young. Where have those days gone?  

The process of putting himself back together is no less complex than the reverse. He adjusts his shirt in a few brisk movements, dabs his red eyes and resolves to ask Nakamura to do something about it. His shoulders loosen, and with a brief second’s struggle, he can even draw the line of his smirk across his cheeks.

“Thanks, Sensei.” He gets up. “Maybe I’ll think about it.”

“Please do,” Sensei murmurs. Karma pretends not to notice the soft anguish in his eyes. “Same time next week, Karma-kun.”

Karma huffs a laugh. “Maybe I’ll be cured by then,” he says loftily.

Sensei doesn’t reply. Karma checks his reflection for visible chinks, and straightens his shoulders one more time. “I’ll tell Gakushuu you say hi. See ya, Sensei.”

He walks out. Before, Akabane Karma used to walk like a lazy panther: hands in pockets, a slow, meandering stroll that got on his efficient partner’s nerves. There are traces of it still, but it’s not perfect; he keeps hunching up and hurrying, like his hands are actually clenched in his pockets. Sensei watches him until he’s out of sight. Then he picks up his pen and reaches for his little notebook, thinking about what to write.

He puts his pen down again. There are no words. Not for this.

**Author's Note:**

> _I can't express it all in words_   
>  _There is no color more beautiful than you_   
>  _If I could make you into music, and play you,_   
>  _The world would be amazed_   
>  _By your shining reverberations_


End file.
